Venan, recently a number of people are getting, I'll use the word frustrated, about current lockbox rewards for gems.

Yes, Alchemists, GS & Silver boxes are random, however when you grind for roughly 7 hours (excluding regen time and questing) to get a melee gem for a war mage or magic gem for a justicar, it becomes very annoying, even more so when it happens on different toons and is constantly happening.

I see 4 solutions: *Trading gems to friends (which has been discussed), let's say someone on your friend list or toon of your own who has had a similar piece of bad fortune.*Allowing the player to choose which gem he or she would require from the choice of the 3 options after they spent hours of hard work, even though this would detract from the randomness of the gem lockboxes.*A trade-in from a gem of the same colour to another, of the same tier obviously, so like a straight swap should it happen.*Gem reduction, where the gem, for say 5k silver, NOT gold shields as you love charging people for everything, can be broken into the previous 100 shards and try again.

Well I second that. It's about time this so called randomness (quite clearly it's not) was scrapped in place of a more fair option solely on the fact of how long it actually takes you to get 100 shards to then,let's say my wR mage) who got 200 red tier 5 shards to get, I'll give you a hint it's wasn't magic or health, 2 melee gems. How many hours wasted? How many energy wasted? I'll tell you it's uncountable. Why is it uncountable I'll tell you, it's not taking into account the tier 4 or 3 that I have farmed for just to get a gem totally useless to me. Venan please amend this to a more fair option

Dags180 wrote:Well I second that. It's about time this so called randomness (quite clearly it's not) was scrapped in place of a more fair option solely on the fact of how long it actually takes you to get 100 shards to then,let's say my wR mage) who got 200 red tier 5 shards to get, I'll give you a hint it's wasn't magic or health, 2 melee gems. How many hours wasted? How many energy wasted? I'll tell you it's uncountable. Why is it uncountable I'll tell you, it's not taking into account the tier 4 or 3 that I have farmed for just to get a gem totally useless to me. Venan please amend this to a more fair option

How on earth is 2/2 melee gems "quite clearly" not random? That's got exactly the same odds as throwing 2 dice and both coming up as a 5 or 6. Would you make an accusation of cheating if someone threw a double-six in a board game?

CuriousAcid wrote:Venan, recently a number of people are getting, I'll use the word frustrated, about current lockbox rewards for gems.

Yes, Alchemists, GS & Silver boxes are random, however when you grind for roughly 7 hours (excluding regen time and questing) to get a melee gem for a war mage or magic gem for a justicar, it becomes very annoying, even more so when it happens on different toons and is constantly happening.

I see 4 solutions: *Trading gems to friends (which has been discussed), let's say someone on your friend list or toon of your own who has had a similar piece of bad fortune.*Allowing the player to choose which gem he or she would require from the choice of the 3 options after they spent hours of hard work, even though this would detract from the randomness of the gem lockboxes.*A trade-in from a gem of the same colour to another, of the same tier obviously, so like a straight swap should it happen.*Gem reduction, where the gem, for say 5k silver, NOT gold shields as you love charging people for everything, can be broken into the previous 100 shards and try again.

Thanks,

Acid

(-side note: pending email to CS that also requires attention-)

- Trading has been suggested numerous times. I'mfirmly in the NO camp for various reasons, boiled down to it would do serious damage to the game. I'm sure someone can find links from the prev discussions for more detail.- Selection of gems - no.If you want to choose, buy them with Valour.- Swapping gems- no. That's the same as selecting.- Pay Silver to get your shards back - no. At 5k silver, you may as well allow selection.

It has been suggested a few times that if you get a gem you don't want, there should be an option to hit it with a hammer and get SOME shards back. I wholly support that. It makes the farming not a total waste without making the lockboxes too powerful.

Lockboxes are gambling. Gem lockboxes allow you to get gems more economically than using Valour to purchase them. In doing so, you take the risk that you may not get what you want. If you want a guarantee of getting what you want, then spend your energy raiding instead, and buy them with Valour.

Dags180 wrote:Well I second that. It's about time this so called randomness (quite clearly it's not) was scrapped in place of a more fair option solely on the fact of how long it actually takes you to get 100 shards to then,let's say my wR mage) who got 200 red tier 5 shards to get, I'll give you a hint it's wasn't magic or health, 2 melee gems. How many hours wasted? How many energy wasted? I'll tell you it's uncountable. Why is it uncountable I'll tell you, it's not taking into account the tier 4 or 3 that I have farmed for just to get a gem totally useless to me. Venan please amend this to a more fair option

How on earth is 2/2 melee gems "quite clearly" not random? That's got exactly the same odds as throwing 2 dice and both coming up as a 5 or 6. Would you make an accusation of cheating if someone threw a double-six in a board game?

CuriousAcid wrote:Venan, recently a number of people are getting, I'll use the word frustrated, about current lockbox rewards for gems.

Yes, Alchemists, GS & Silver boxes are random, however when you grind for roughly 7 hours (excluding regen time and questing) to get a melee gem for a war mage or magic gem for a justicar, it becomes very annoying, even more so when it happens on different toons and is constantly happening.

I see 4 solutions: *Trading gems to friends (which has been discussed), let's say someone on your friend list or toon of your own who has had a similar piece of bad fortune.*Allowing the player to choose which gem he or she would require from the choice of the 3 options after they spent hours of hard work, even though this would detract from the randomness of the gem lockboxes.*A trade-in from a gem of the same colour to another, of the same tier obviously, so like a straight swap should it happen.*Gem reduction, where the gem, for say 5k silver, NOT gold shields as you love charging people for everything, can be broken into the previous 100 shards and try again.

Thanks,

Acid

(-side note: pending email to CS that also requires attention-)

- Trading has been suggested numerous times. I'mfirmly in the NO camp for various reasons, boiled down to it would do serious damage to the game. I'm sure someone can find links from the prev discussions for more detail.- Selection of gems - no.If you want to choose, buy them with Valour.- Swapping gems- no. That's the same as selecting.- Pay Silver to get your shards back - no. At 5k silver, you may as well allow selection.

It has been suggested a few times that if you get a gem you don't want, there should be an option to hit it with a hammer and get SOME shards back. I wholly support that. It makes the farming not a total waste without making the lockboxes too powerful.

Lockboxes are gambling. Gem lockboxes allow you to get gems more economically than using Valour to purchase them. In doing so, you take the risk that you may not get what you want. If you want a guarantee of getting what you want, then spend your energy raiding instead, and buy them with Valour.

EJ_Mya wrote:I don't know that I agree with trading gems/shards between players, but I do agree with either allowing us to chose which gem we received from 100 shards or trade gems between our own toons.

Selecting the gem received from 100 shards makes it massively underpriced compared to buying with Valour.Ex: Tier 5 Melee Gem is 2,500 Captain Valour (3,000 until recently) which takes significantly more resource to reach than 100 red shards from Callisto. Buying with Valour would need to be reduced in cost MUCH further - say to 1,500 (gut feeling number) CV - which has a lot of impact on everything from reduced raid participation to higher player turnover to reduced revenue which would need to be made up elsewhere.

If you don't want to get a random gem, you buy them with Valor. If you could farm shards and get a guaranteed gem, it would make farming Valor for gems completely redundant. You either take the quicker route and gamble, or spend a little extra time and ensure you get the gem you want.

Last edited by Berlo on Sun Jan 05, 2014 7:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.

You never waste your time playing this game. Your HS increases, your killing count increases, your silver increases. Finishing the story for this game is normal play, anything after is end game contents. End game contents include maxing gems, equip, aiming hs leaderboard, complete all feats. Honestly, if you dislike raiding or have no time for it, solo dungeon takes little time and effort and u just have to keep solo every time your en fills up. If you only play, say 2 hours a day and u choose not to raid then i'm sorry u'll spend a long time to meet those end game goals. Solo dungeon requires commitment for whole day everyday whenever u can. i honestly does 20+ prince of blades dungeon everyday and total play time less than 2 hours because each prince of blades dungeon takes less than 5 min to complete. it does not hinder my daily life. and yet i can pretty much get 100 gem shards per day. u go figure

A few points raised here, firstly, finishing 10th in GK gold gives 250 (roughly) captains valour, spending 50e. So 10 raids is 2500cv, 1 t5 gem. 500eEach dungeon gives on average 4 shards at 20e each, so 100 shards/4 per drop is 25. 25 x 20 = 500e, about the same. So if you can choose your own for 500e spent in a raid, why not on a lockbox? It's the same either way.

Whoever said they get 100 gem shards per day... To do that, you'd be playing most of the day UNLESS you have maxed out your energy regen with a recipe, have an elixer of stamina you're burning pots, or using GS, and that's a fact. With STANDARD regen and assuming you have 40e to start, on average it would take you 20 Hours and 48 minutes to complete it.

Cletus, I DEFINITELY agree with your last 2 points. GS take either time or money, both are valuable commodities, so recipes would make sense to be shared if GS bought. And gear sales take the pee, loads of raids for t12 gear and getting back 15k silver... Very silly.

Not after an argument with venan or anyone else, but this game is about balance... Toon balancing, PvP and PvE balancing (even though they aren't, you ruined the JC in PvP and PvE but that's another thread), so why not balance gems?